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I try to limit myself to no more than two examples per year of opening a review with “Wow.” There’s one reserved for the trippy-neon animation of next month’s sci-fi adventure Titan A.E., which will hopefully do a better job of transporting these jaded eyes truly elsewhere than anything since Heavy Metal (whose long-gestating sequel, Heavy Metal 2000, has now been relegated to a summer cable premiere, with a limited theater run possibly to follow). The other was set aside for this, the sequel to Brian DePalma’s byzantine 1996 Tom Cruise vehicle adapted from the original TV technothriller. Just knowing it’s directed by patron saint of hyperkinesia John Woo – plus that it features lovely Thandie Newton, and an equally pulchritudinous black Triumph Speed Triple seen in the trailers wheelying across the landscape – made M:I-2 the first summer film to generate genuine personal anticipation. So, why has that three-letter palindrome now been re-assigned tentatively to the claymation Chicken Run, which had previously been slotted for a “giddy gurgle”? Read on.
M:I-2 brings back Cruise as Ethan Hunt, that stealthy rascal whose super-secret organization “the Secretary will disavow,” etc. This time he’s interrupted during an extreme-climbing vacation in the desert – an acrophobic sequence (I read somewhere the other day that there are only three things human beings come out of the womb fearing intrinsically: heights, loud noises, and the prospect that Britney Spears might marry a Kennedy and one day wind up First Lady) that announces early on Woo’s thrill-ride intent – by one of those incendiary high-tech messages from his new boss (Anthony Hopkins). Turncoat former associate Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott, best known from Ever After and for the fact that he had to pass up the role of Wolverine in X-Men when shooting this project took longer than expected) has pilfered a mysterious item named Chimera from an Australian biotech firm. It’s up to Hunt to find out why Chimera could be so valuable that Ambrose would kill several hundred people to get it, and to take it away from him.
In addition to re-enlisting the help of trusted hardware guru Luther Stickwell (Ving Rhames), Hunt recruits Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Newton, who was the spectral title character in Beloved, and likely got this job because she made an appearance with Cruise in Interview with a Vampire), a gorgeous professional thief whose past romantic history with Ambrose should come in handy. Complication #1: right from their initial encounter, an abortive jewel heist at a Spanish villa (which also serves to show that Woo can be as artful with flamenco dancers as with drop-kicks and AK-47s), Ethan and Nyah fall ass-over-teakettle, drooling ga-ga in love. Complication #2: Ambrose has a history of impersonating Hunt, so just like in the original TV series, you never know when a major character is going to remove his/her fake skin and turn out to be somebody else entirely less sympathetic to lending a hand in whatever predicament you find yourself at the moment (as was also the case in Woo’s Nic Cage/John Travolta film Face-Off).
These developments make for a plot much more predictable than was expected, further diluted by chemistry between Cruise and Newton that is lukewarm at best. For the former you can blame a couple “Star Trek” writers who came up with the story (although the actual screenplay was written by iconic Chinatown scripter Robert Towne, so some of the dramatic dialogue, in particular the first meeting between Cruise and Hopkins, is pretty good), and for that latter – you don’t really expect people to look that good and act at the same time, do you? In the meantime some of the more colorful players, including Hopkins and Rhames, don’t turn up in enough scenes to make a big difference.
But – the dearth of drama does provide less distraction for the important stuff, like chase scenes, lots of precarious dangling over edges, and expending enough ordnance to keep Smith & Wesson solvent for at least another decade. As for the much-awaited motorcycle duel, let me go on record as saying that, in my opinion as a rider, despite one stunt that’s obviously digitally generated, it’s still the finest extended display of two-wheeled hooliganism* put on film to date. But it leads to a martial-arts battle between Hunt and Ambrose that goes on so long I was starting to hope Chow Yun-Fat would show up and clean both their clocks so we could either get back to the motorized mayhem or go home – not that I don’t like a good chopsocky ballet, but we’re not talkin’ Jet Li-quality here. (Just once I’d like to see a movie fight that goes like a real one: as soon as somebody gets hit once in the nose real hard, he either has enough stunned wherewithal left through the pain and blood to give up and walk away, or his opponent uses that advantage to finish him off. As a friend of mine whose college major was B‘n’B – Brawling in Bars – used to say, “I do my best work when the other guy’s unconscious.”). At least Woo’s trademark pigeons don’t come flocking around again at the end, as in an earlier skirmish where the peril of catching histoplasmosis from bird droppings seems greater than the threat collecting a bullet.
Filmed, like The Matrix, entirely in Australia to save on production costs, M:I-2 undoubtedly makes good use of its resources for a notable achievement in action cinema. I guess it’s simply unrealistic to expect something like John Woo’s Citizen Kane anytime soon. B
*There’s a whole motorcycling subculture, more visible in England than in America, built around “hooligan bikes” (of which the Speed Triple is an excellent example; the Harley-engined Buell Lightning, the Ducati Monster, and the KTM Duke are others). It has more to do with enthusiastic, unauthorized stunting on public roads – wheelies, stoppies, burnouts, brake slides, etc. – than with mere speed or fashion, as is sometimes the case with the sport-bike and cruiser crowds in America. Fortunately, around here, as long as you’re lucky enough to get detained by a cop who’s also an off-duty rider, you can get away with the occasional display while leaving a Bi-Lo parking lot by claiming that you were only lofting the front wheel to save on tire wear.
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